Colonization
For most factions in the game, colonization in Endless Space 2 takes the established 4X game trope of sending a civilian settler (in this case, a colony ship) to a location, and then triggering a special "colonize" action that consumes the colony ship, and tries to turn a planet into an official part of your empire. There are a few factions that use slight (or extreme) twists on this mechanic, and those are listed below. A player needs to mind expansion disapproval when expanding their empire, which incurs sharp penalties to happiness when establishing more colonies than a set amount. This is covered elsewhere, but depends on galaxy size, difficulty level, and faction choice. Sending a colony ship Every faction that utilizes colony ships starts with one immediately. Beyond that point, they needed to be built. A colony ship is its special civilian ship type, with no other being capable of utilizing the module. These ships have very limited attack and defense capabilities and should be escorted to their destination if there's any risk of attack by pirates or a hostile faction, which is quite low early game. It is recommended to upgrade the ship blueprint with better engines once the player have researched them. Once the colony ship has reached its destination, it can establish an outpost on any of the habitable planets. Establishing an outpost Once the outpost has been established, it needs to be fed a certain amount of food (or industry for Riftborn) before it becomes a proper colony. Several players can establish outposts at the same time (which makes an action to leech some of the contestants' food available) with the first player to reach the target amount winning control of the system. Upon winning this, all planets with outposts (including those of opponents) will be considered colonized by the winner, so it might be desirable, if it's clear that you're going to lose a race for a colony, to deliberately 'decolonize' to deny the opponent the benefit of trying to colonize the extra planet you were going for. Note that if you do 'decolonize', you will receive a free replacement colony ship at that system, albeit with only one engine equipped. It is possible-but-rare for a tie to actually form, at which point the outposts in a system will be in a stalemate until one faction breaks the tie by weakening an opponent's colony (see notes below). Once an outpost becomes a colony, it is possible to start building system improvements and colonize other planets in the system. Growing an outpost into a Colony A colony needs to reach 300 units of food (on normal speed) in order to transform into a colony (not coincidentally identical to what's necessary to grow a single pop unit in a colonized system. This food comes from two sources - the natural food production value that a single pop unit (and any raw output bonuses) would give from a planet. It is also periodically boosted by small (visible in game) civilian ships which will depart from a nearby system you have a proper/full colony on. Natural Production The natural food production can be boosted by anything that boosts the output of all planets or per-pop fidsi. Since you can't build buildings on the planet, they can't boost colonization speed, but anything else works - this includes Laws, Empire Upgrades, Assimilation Bonuses from Minors Factions, and even Behemoths with FIDSI-boosting modules in orbit. There are a few things deliberately oriented towards colonization speed - the Industrialist party always has a available-early-game law that boosts it by a flat amount, and for example, the UE can get an early empire bonus that boosts it by 40%; however, all bonuses that affect food affect colonization. The growing outpost is considered to have a single population unit. So for example - if the planet has any anomalies, the Ecologist "Green Fertility Bill" will boost it by +2 (3 in republic), and regardless of anomalies the Ecologist "Cool Copies" clause will boost it by +2 (+4 in republic), which sometimes can end up doubling the natural output of many planets if both laws are in force. The Scientist party later on gets a +30% food law; this affects colonies. There are also enormous' ''bonuses possible from minor faction assimilation effects; Sowers can add a +25 to the food on a sterile world, Basryxo will add 10% of the industry value into the food value, Haroshems can guarantee a minimum of 5, etc. '''You can spend Dust to provide a 2x multiplier to all of this, for 10 turns. The dust cost scales linearly with the number of systems you already own. Supply Ships A planet (typically your highest food-producing world) will be designated as the supply world for the colony, and will send out supply ships every few turns to supply the colony. These are actually visible/active-elements in game, and can be stopped by enemy blockades, or destroyed by enemy fire (yielding a dust bounty equal to the food value carried by the ship). You can re-assign which planet is the supply world at any time. This is desirable because first, it's often imperative that the colony ships reach the target planet in a reasonable amount of time (or avoid enemy territory), and second, the supply world will actually have its food supply depleted by the act of being the supply world. This is keyed up to be "most of" the food being produced by that world, but it seems to be based on some internal measure (like 80% of the 'natural' output for an ecstatic instance of that system), so if some other circumstances like average happiness are actually dropping the production, it's possible for that supply world to tilt into starvation. I believe you can designate no world to be the supply world, by opening the selection dialog and hitting cancel, in order to avoid this penalty. The value will adapt each turn, so boosting the food output will boost subsequent ships from that same colony. To avoid starvation, the best tricks seem to involve boosting happiness and stationing a hero which boosts food on the supply world. You can spend influence to double the amount of food on these ships, but beware - this doubles the food cost to the supply world. This will virtually guarantee the supply world tips into starvation. If this is not carefully managed, you may lose carefully cultivated population types on that world if they're the only instance. However, this can, in choice circumstances, allow you to quickly colonize a world that, on its own, has very poor food growth, assuming you've got a reasonably quick route to the target. Contesting Colonies Multiple factions can colonize different planets in a system. Each outpost will grow independently without any interference from the others. If you so choose, you can spend military manpower to steal a small amount (10 food?/turn? or is it 10%?) from all opponent's outposts. This can tilt a weak enemy outpost into negative growth. They can, however, do it right back to you, which more or less evens out. If you place military ships in orbit over the system, they will suppress the growth of the enemy outpost. This is directly correlated with the siege strength of the ships in question, which primarily derives from the ship class, but can also be affected by dedicated siege modules. As a rule, the sieging power of a ship without special modules is based on the type of ship hull, and bigger ships do more damage (it's worth noting that even though they're not 'bigger', actual combat ships are better than scouts at this, and colony ships do nothing without special modules). To do this they need to either be the sole ships present, or need to be blockading the system (this mechanic won't deplete a colony if enemy ships are also in orbit and you're not blockading/guarding the system). Note that this is considered a moderately hostile action to the AI, and will immediately give them a fairly negative stance towards you - this will wear off after a while, but can easily tilt the scales. Blockading a system also prevents all "boosting" actions, including that spending of military manpower mentioned above. It will also prevent inbound food supply ships from being able to reach the surface. The first outpost to reach 300 units of food will, after stalling for a single turn (to allow ties), win the race and grant the system to the winner as the full "owner". An outpost whose stockpile of food is driven below zero will fail and be removed. This often is a deliberate side-effect of blockading an enemy colony. Note also: any situation where multiple contestants were vying for colonization will leave "partial" pop units of their type on the system, which will be picked up and grown to a full unit in the regular pop growth sequence. This means that if a sophon and a lumeris both had outposts on a system, and the sophons won the contest without eliminating the lumeris outpost, the sophons will subsequently end up growing a lumeris pop as their second or third pop unit, and from then on can grow lumeris pops normally. This is particularly relevant if contesting colonies with a Craver, as you will eventually receive a craver pop on the system unless you completely eliminate their outpost. Winning outpost races against an AI will "annoy" them; it's considered a very minor act of hostility. Once will be forgotten, but repeatedly doing this will make them belligerent, at least if you're in a cold war diplomatic stance (as you are at the start of the game). Colonizing planets in a system Once the system itself has been colonized, the player can colonize other planets by adding the project to the building queue. After the project is complete, it's possible to exploit the planet and move the population from other planets in the same star system to it and vice versa. Colonizing most types of planets requires researching specific technologies - typically, the less hospitable, the more advanced. Other approaches All of these faction-unique mechanics are described in far more detail on the specific pages covering the faction, but they're briefly described below: Lumeris The Lumeris do not build colony ships; they instantly purchase outposts with dust. Other than this they work identically to other factions - their only other unique mechanic is that they can sell outposts they create, via diplomacy. Note that if you're playing against a lumeris AI, they are reasonably receptive to selling their outposts, as long as you're not hostile. Vodyani The Vodyani are ship-bound and do not colonize planets at all, instead living on Arks. Arks are colossal residential ships that essentially "house" everything another faction would typically build on the planet's surface - an Ark can dock/anchor with a system to enter resource production mode (when travelling, they produce nothing), but is otherwise free to travel wherever and whenever it wants. Every Vodyani on an Ark "projects" on every planet in a system it is anchored to, provided the "colonization" tech for the appropriate planet type has been researched. In order to add a new system to their empire, the Vodyani simply build a new Ark in a system they already own, pilot it to the desired destination, and anchor it there. Riftborn As the Riftborn are incapable of producing food, their outposts are instead grown via the industry value on the target planet, but otherwise function the same way (they need to reach 300, and can be siphoned by other factions via troops, and/or can siphon from others - yes, they're siphoning the "food" value of another faction and treating it as a boost to their industry value). This can be boosted by paying strategic resources (either hyperium or titanium), which respectively will either boost the planet's industry value by 100%, or boost the industry value by +25. These mutually stack with each other (the 100% doubles the +25). Unlike other factions, the riftborn do not send out colony-supply ships, nor do they lose food on a supply world. As with other factions, since their production towards a colony is based on the actual industry values on the target planet, anything (like laws or assimilation bonuses) that boosts the production values on a planet will boost colonization speed, except for them, it's based on the industry value rather than food. There are a few notables here - the standout one being the Pulsos "Thinkers and Tinkers I" which provides a potentially enormous industry gain, reducing all colonization to a few turns. Unfallen Instead of colony ships, The Unfallen utilize vineships. A vineship functions similarly to a colony ship, but is reusable and has a much higher industry cost. Vineships can spread vines from nearby system that has already been vined, which takes a number of turns. Systems are considered vineable if they are connected to vined system via starlane, or are in range of 23 dots from it. Multiple vineships can place vines faster. Envining process can be paused for up to 3 turns, after which it is reset. Once the Unfallen player has spread vines to a system, they can pick a planet from that system to colonize for free, instantly. Vaulters The Vaulters do not build colony ships or create outposts. Instead they use their unique ship, the Argosy, to instantly turn a colonizable planet into a colony. This will also trigger a Golden Age on the system, granting FIDSI bonuses. After colonizing a system, the Argosy has to recharge for several turns, though this recharge period can be bypassed by spending Dust and Strategic Resources. Hissho The Hissho produce colony ships and create outposts like other factions, but their outposts have to be manually turned into colonies by spending . This action can be taken as soon as the outpost is created, but its cost will decrease as the outpost grows, down to a minimum of 10 plus a penalty based on Overcolonisation. Alternatively, Hissho may collect from unoccupied planets using mining probes. In this case, resources from planet will be added to pops in their main system. Umbral Choir Umbral Choir faction has a very different system in terms of colonization. Instead of having colonies they have a unique system linked to sanctuaries that may be placed on any system (whether or not presence of an enemy faction). Sanctuaries are acquired through the new mechanic introduced from penumbra extension which is Hacking. After a system is hacked, one of the outcome is the option to place a sanctuary then it can be filled only with the home population of the Umbral Choir. Category:Game Systems